Want To Really Learn Something About Animation?

Go to Animation Meat.

This site has been around for a while, but it’s information is so helpful to both the student and professional animator that it is worth posting. For those who don’t know (or are too busy or timid to click on the link) Animation Meat is a collection of animation news, notes, handouts, model sheets, fun facts, practice assignments, and what-have-you covering the history of animation. Pretty much all you need to know.

Oh yeah and it’s free.

Happy reading-

Dr. A

Scared Straight… Off Balance

One of my students, Ben Kerr found this fine montage of people being scared by practical jokes. The interesting thing with most of these clips is that the people react the same way. Sure the patterns of movement differ, but most often The “victim” of the practical joke loses there balance.
Next time you have to animate a take think back to the extemes of surprise shown here. I’m not suggesting you animate the character always falling down, but I think we can take from it at least one thing. When frightened, our brain processes things in a certain order.

Brain’s Thought # 1- Yikes! Let’s get away from that which frightens asap.

Brain’s Thought # 2- Falling! Must try to catch our balance.

Brain’s Thought # 1- Ooof! Too late. Sorry about that pal, but that really freaked me out. I mean damn, I really didn’t see that coming.

The reaction time is so quick that the need to flee and the need to not fall down compete directly with one another. It’s as if when scared, our body naturally falls down for comedic effect. Weird. Also I think that the cats are funny.

Watch out-

Dr. A

Broadcasting The Inevitable

This clip has been around for at least a few weeks, but even if you’ve seen it I think it’s worth a second look. It’s a terrific example of clear broadcasting. For those that aren’t familiar with the idea of broadcasting, it is the foreshadowing of upcoming events. Think of it as another kind of anticipation. Broadcasting informs the audience of a character’s intent. A good example of this in a scene would be having a character doing practice gestures with a dart that it will eventually be throwing at a target. This action communicates the idea that the character is taking his/her time in aiming the dart in an attempt to hit the target as best they can. It also is a good opertunity to show the thought process of the character.

These small broadcasting gestures can give your scene suble hints of authenticity and hopefully a relatable element of truth. As with most things in animation, broadcasting can be overused or executed poorly, but in this clip it is handled masterfully.

enjoy-

Dr. A

Milt Thumbs….

An Animator from the ol’ days stopped by with some really great stuff to show us. His name is Chuck Harvey. Chuck was an animator at Disney for 8 years and trained under Ollie, Frank and Milt. He collected alot of great things for the purpose of teaching. I taught a class last summer and Chuck was also teaching. We were able to produce 3 animated films in just two weeks at the CSU Summer Arts program. One was a traditionaly animated film using a package called mirage to animate and color it. Its a good piece of software for paperless animation. It kinda reminds me of Deluxe Paint 3 for the Amiga. Anyone remember that?

Enjoy the Milt Thumbnails. These are only some of them…
In a later blog, we will discuss thumbnailing as well as have a good interview with Chuck.

Milt Thumbnails
CSU Summer Arts
Mirage
2-d Film produced at Summer Arts (Bass Akwards)

Andrew

Student Film

I just thought I would share an excellent student film. Ben Willis was a student of SCAD where he studied character animation and created some very fun and entertaining short films. Just thought I would share my favorite of his Quark.

click here to see quark!

enjoy,

Dr. Stephen G.